A document tab bar for LibreOffice Writer. All open Writer documents appear as clickable tabs in a toolbar — switch, manage, and organise your documents without touching the Window menu.
- One tab per open document — click to switch instantly
- Active tab indicator — the current document is marked with
● - Modified indicator — unsaved documents show
*in the tab name - Per-tab menu (▾) — Rename, Save, Save As, Move Left / Move Right, New Document, Close, Close All Others, Close All
- Saved Tab Sets — save your current group of open documents and restore them in one click; supports multiple named sets
- Restore Last Session — automatically reopens the documents you had open when you last quit
- Tab Key Switching — optional Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycling between tabs (toggle in the Sets menu; off by default)
- Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, Linux (XDG-compliant config paths)
- Download
TabBar.oxtfrom the Releases page. - In LibreOffice: Tools → Extension Manager → Add…
- Select the
.oxtfile and follow the prompts. - Restart LibreOffice when asked.
After installation, click Enable Tab Bar in the toolbar that appears. The tab bar will populate with your open documents immediately.
Requires LibreOffice's bundled Python (or any Python 3.x):
cd TabBar
/path/to/libreoffice/program/python build.py
# Output: ../TabBar.oxtOn Windows with a default LibreOffice install:
"C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\python.exe" build.py
Settings and saved sets are stored in a single JSON file:
| Platform | Path |
|---|---|
| Windows | %APPDATA%\LibreOffice\tabbar_sets.json |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/LibreOffice/tabbar_sets.json |
| Linux | $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/libreoffice/tabbar_sets.json (default: ~/.config/libreoffice/) |
Debug logging is off by default. To enable, set the environment variable TABBAR_DEBUG=1 before launching LibreOffice. The log is written to tab_bar.log in the same config directory as above.